It had to be the same horse that had been down at the first-stage cabin. Randy was right that if it had fastened on one of them and saw its rider among them, it would follow through hell and ice— and he was surer and surer which of a number of horses it was: a horse that had always imaged itself as a succession of horses, as something twisting and horselike and scary, and there and not-there. It was the unhealthiest image he’d ever gotten from a supposedly sane horse, and that was what, in the way of nighthorses, it called itself, no human naming it.
<Spook> was the human name he’d put to it. He’d never learned what Ancel Harper had called it before he fired on the wrong rider. Harper, the <dead man in snow,> the source of <blood on snow,> might get pity in hell. Not from him. Not after he’d ridden with the man. And if it wanted Brionne Goss—that was worse news than Harper.
<Gunfire. Rider lying in the white, blowing snow, not moving.>
“Walk,” Danny said.
Carlo had found another small reserve of strength. So had he. He hadn’t much left.
But thank God for the snow finally giving them consistent traction. Cloud’s three-toed hooves, which shaped themselves very readily to rock, flexed enough so honest dry snow didn’t pack in the clefts of those feet: Cloud was sure-footed and confident now, so were they, and they were finally making time, through trees that indicated they’d turned away from the blasted areas and gone across a natural slope of the mountain.
They shouldcome to the cabin.
At any moment now.
Chapter 4
Jennie was supposed to be asleep, but the wind was making a racket and she’d been bored a lot during the day. She was bored now, lying in the dark, in bed. The storm had been going on for a whole day, and she had played games and done chores and played games and she’d had a nap she didn’t usually take any more. She wished there was something to do.
If she got up, mama and papa would scold. If she slipped in to sit by the fire and didn’t make a sound, and just sat and watched the pictures in the coals, or maybe played with her trucks real quietly, mama and papa might not know she was up.
But the bell was still ringing out by the gate. Nobody had fixed it. The night was scary with wind and things going thump, and she began to be convinced that something spooky had waked her. She wasn’t sure what: she thought it might have been a sending, and she wished she knew what that was.
Spook-bears and goblin-cats didn’t ever get inside the walls. Serge Lasierre slept in the village gate house with his rifle on nights when the Wild was acting up, and bears couldn’t get past Serge. Mama and papa had told her that.
But that bell was ringing and ringing. Maybe a bear had gotten Serge and thatwas why Serge hadn’t fixed the bell.
Maybe out there in the wind and the dark something was really wrong.
She thought it might be Rain calling her. Rain was her horse, well, mostly her horse, though papa said she’d have to wait till Rain made up his mind, and Rain might have to leave the way Leaf had left. But she didn’t think so. Rain washers, and he and she were friends. And papa knew it even if he didn’t approve.
Rain was, papa also said, a loud horse, because he was only two, and didn’t know but one pitch to be at, —like some little girls, papa had said. And like little girls, anyway, Rain heard things older horses didn’t pay attention to. Hearing everything made Rain spooky sometimes, over shadows and thumps and over things somebody remembered, so Rain’s rider had to be very quiet and not think scary thoughts, even alone in bed at night, in the barracks where the horses didn’t ordinarily hear them.
But in the barracks they weren’t supposed to hear the horses this far, either, unless the horses were upset.
And it wasn’t just Rain, she decided. Mom-horse Shimmer was nervous, too. Shimmer was pregnant again and expecting a foal in the spring, and mom-horse was getting angry, not angry at Rain, but disturbed at something Rain picked up, and that upset papa-horse.
So she wasn’tjust making-believe. Papa said don’t ever make-believe near the horses, and said that that was why they built the rider-shelter so far away from the horse-den, so little girls being silly couldn’t upset them.
< Bang!> went the boards. She knew she didn’t hear it with her own ears, but the horses were carrying it to her: papa-horse Slip had kicked out and shaken the side of the den or something.
That was too much. She flew out of bed and grabbed her sweater. < Bang!> went the boards again. Rain was <upset> and <wanting fight> and thinking <shadow in the storm.>
She could tell where her door was because light from the common-room came down the hall even when the fire was banked for the night, and it hadn’t been banked too long, because there was a glow in the room. She had no trouble finding her boots.
< Bang!> Thump! went the logs, one sound in her head and one in her ears. That was real for sure; and she thought about waking up mama and papa; but they were asleep and she didn’t want to make a fuss and be told she was silly or dreaming, which was what mama had said the last time she’d come running to their bed, scared. She’d see first.
So she hurried and opened the door to the snow-passage that led from the barracks to the den, and took down the ’lectric light from its shelf and carried it, shining its light up and around and down the wooden walls and floor, wood planks all shiny with ice where the drips were, and icicled in places.
The dark was scary. Vermin like willy-wisps would burrow under the boards or anywhere they could when it got cold, and they got hungry and they’d make holes in the boards and try to bite your ankles; and you mustn’t ever fall if they bit you, that was what mama said, because they’d swarm all over you and eat you till nothing but bones were left. Granpa when she was little had said they liked toes, especially in the wintertime and especially from little girls who didn’t mind and didn’t do what they were supposed to.
But granpa had gone away with grandma and not come back and now her parents didn’t think they were ever coming back. Mama thought they’d fallen off a cliff. Papa thought maybe granpa’s heart might have given out and grandma wouldn’t leave that place. Things did happen out in the Wild.
Things happened, too, in dark passages, where the light made scary shapes on the boards around and underfoot and overhead. She wasn’t supposed to be in the passage before mama and papa were awake. She might get in trouble.
But now she’d mostly done it, anyway, and she was already going to get in trouble—so she figured she might as well find out if Rain was all right, before papa and mama woke up and stopped her and she got in trouble for having done nothing at all.
So on that thought she ran, thump-thump, down the boards, and her light and her shadow went ahead of her.
It was awfully cold. She’d thought she’d just be a minute, and then she wouldn’t need her coat, but a brisk draft was coming through, blowing her hair and chilling right through her clothes.
Then she heard another, slower thumping on the boards, one-two, three-four feet, and she knew that was <Rain in the passage> where Rain wasn’t ever supposed to be. Rain showed up, his eyes shimmering beneath the bangs that mostly covered his face and his split-lipped nose working, nostrils wide, to be sure who she was in spite of the <Jennie with light> that was in his mind. She’d scared him with her giant-shadow, and he scared her with his.
“It’s me,” she said in a quavery voice, but it was always dependent on the rider to be the grown-up, so she talked like mama. “Silly. You can’t turn around. Back up. <Back up.”>
Somebody had left the door open at the den-end of the passage, she thought, and that wasn’t her fault. But when Rain had backed, with her pushing at his chest, all the way back to the den, she saw the door was kicked to flinders.